Monday, 29 February 2016

Happy Leap Day everyone! I hope all the ever-so-young Feb 29th babies are rejoicing at turning a year older. Lucky you, ageing at one quarter the pace. Anyway, the weekend was pretty busy for me. I had my first non-Aso internship, and then I had an exam. So, recaps!

Internship Experience

My internship took place here!

The internship was basically three hours long, which I felt was rather short. Before I came to Japan, I always thought internships were fairly long, one month, six months, one year. I did that one week JC law thing, but I consider that more work experience than internships.

But in Japan, internships are one day, three days, five days. Long internships (more than a month) exist, but they're quite rare. Though the short time period makes sense if you consider that internships are part of the recruitment process, which has a fixed beginning and ending.

What I did was basically:

- listen to a company explanation
- talk to the employees
- fill in a survey

Not very internship like in my view. I have heard that in other places, they make you do Group Discussions and presentations, but I guess because this was short, they skipped it.

Ok, so takeaways:

I think the people here are interesting. They're definitely people I'd like to work with, and the job has a high degree of freedom that I like. For example, one of the employees got 10 offers from companies during his shukatsu season. Turns out it was a strategy to unsettle the other applicants at his dream company. I thought it was a clever tactic to take, even if I won't be doing it.

That said, the industry doesn't interest me (I was looking at their IT infrastructure and construction sections, but it seems like they don't do much in the way of Industry 4.0), and despite their increased interest in overseas expansion, that's more through M&A than through sending employees overseas.

But all in all, I think this is a company I will consider applying too. They seem quite Japanese (if that makes sense), and it will be a challenge for me. Especially since they only accept one in two hundred applicants.

Oh, and one more thing that I noticed. In the beginning, the speaker welcomed us and told us that he hoped the internship helped us with our job hunting. This is actually quite common, I feel.

Even at the game company, they talked about the primary interview in a 'we hope it helps you in your job hunt' kind of way. I guess even though they are technically on the hunt for talent, they have to make it seem like they're helping us.

Ok, I don't know if this was interesting. Just something I noticed.

Accounting Exam

My accounting exam was depressing. I was never good at accounting (in Japan. I wasn't that terrible when I was in Singapore), so I didn't have much confidence going in.

It was actually an eventful exam. First, the questions weren't what I expected. Especially the last one, which was different from the practice papers. But I don't know how one company was so fast, when I left the exam hall, they were handing out the answers! Although it was only the first question, and it seems like I got 12/20 for the first one, which is a failing grade. I did say it was depressing.

Second eventful thing involved my calculator (of course). The first time I took the exam, my calculator was taped up, but apart from that it was fine. So I brought in my GDC, because I'm used to it, and halfway through, the proctor comes and tells me my calculator is forbidden! I was so worried that they were going to disqualify me, but they just took it away and gave me another one. That was such a close call.

Anyway, job applications open from tomorrow onwards, and I have a few seminars coming up. So I'll be blogging about that, and I don't know, are there any topics you'd like me to talk about? I know I ranted on creativity and messiness on my Dayre the other day, but I don't know how many people would be interested in random topics like that.

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

I actually meant to blog about this yesterday, but clearly I was too busy relaxing to do so :p Anyway, on Monday, I went to my first job-hunting seminar that was aimed at foreign students. Even though the official job hunting season starts March 1st, there are fair number of pre-season events going on.

This seminar was held at Hakozaki campus, which was awesome because it's near me! What happened was that there were six companies who attended and spoke about the type of students that they tended to hire. The companies were:

So four out of five companies were manufacturing companies (in some way), which suited me, since I want to go into the manufacturing industry.

After the talk, we got to pick three companies and spend 15 minutes talking to the representative. The two that I'm most interested in a Yaskawa (which has come up over and over and over in my Industry 4.0 research) and JTB Kyushu (because travel. Although I'm not sure if it's a good choice, since the tourism industry seems ripe for distintermediation).

What I found the most useful was the fact that Yaskawa Taiwan was actually hiring. I did get the representative's name card and sent him an email about it, but I haven't heard back. I guess I'll just have to wait for March 1st to start applying to the various companies.

Oh, and I have to remember to sign up for another job fair. Fingers crossed the whole season goes well!

Short post, with no photos, but I just wanted to give everyone an update (: Hope you're all doing well! I'm expecting my last few results soon, so I'll do a round-up post for the year/semester when they're all in!

Saturday, 20 February 2016

Last full day of the Oneness Asia Leaders Summit! Since I'll be skipping the morning session tomorrow (and I believe most things are over tomorrow), I guess everyone will be spared from the daily recap. Unless I do a mega post, which I believe even my fingers don't want me to do. But on to today's recap!

Morning discussion session

Basically, the morning was the discussion session for the Finance committee. It was run by the dude that I saw giving orders the past few days, and unlike yesterday, it was completely in Japanese.

And I still managed to derail it for like 15 min.

Basically, the dude in charge (with the loud voice) is doing law, but apparently invests on his own too, so he was trying to explain the reading, which was an ADB paper on how the finance industry in Asia hasn't caught up to the economy yet.

I sort of assumed it was talking about SEA, and kinda disagreed with the unspoken assumptions and lack of data and said so. It ended up with me speaking in English (he spent some time in America, apparently), and him replying in Japanese for the benefit of everyone.

It turns out it was on the whole of Asia, which I think is way too large a generalisation (a Vietnamese girl also said so), and I still harbour doubts about the validity of the argument, considering we don't know the percentage of zero-leverage companies, the size of the Islamic Financial industry, state of government support, etc. And I said as much to him after the whole thing was over, during lunch hahaha.

He was a good sport about it though. Even though I told him that in AC, this would never pass, since they didn't state the assumptions and the data was incomplete (in my opinion). Plus, if I generalised that much, I'm pretty sure I would be in trouble (even he agreed it was too broad). And then I told him his uni reminded me of AC HAHAHAHA. Anyone want to try and guess his uni?

The lunch bento. For some reason, I really like how the box looks, so I actually took a picture.

And this is the inside. The rice was cold, but the side were delicious!

Afternoon collaborative work

There was some limited-seating special talk in the afternoon, but all of us who didn't go for it went for collaborative work instead. What that means is that we got mixed into groups and asks to summarise our opinions from the four sessions (Diplomacy, Environment, Resources, Education).

My group's summary was: Problems are created due to differences/inequality - whether it's in education (public vs private, or even the type of principles within private schools), Diplomacy, Resources (the have and the have-nots) and Environment. To solve this, we need to teach people how to create win-win situations that will eventually get rid of the differences.Afternoon talk+Discussion

So the afternoon started with a talk by the expert - an investment manager at LaSalle. It was kinda like an introduction to the company and what investment management companies do, especially in real estate.

Personally, I thought the Q&A was more interesting. I asked about black swan events (if you haven't, you should read the book), and apparently LaSalle expects a black swan event in the next 1-2 years.

And on the personal side, his advice to us was: work hard at what you like. Work hard at what's in front of you. And then eventually, all those unconnected events in your life will be linked together and take on meaning.

Since we had a lot of time, there was another break and I went to talk to the lecturer with some others. Loud voice leader was there, and he was like "she's good, she's really good" *blush*

I think it's cause of the morning HAHA. I'm totally not as smart please.

Anyway, we ended with a discussion on what you should invest in in the future, and when it was my group's turn, I talked about IoT, of course. I was so excited that when it was my teammate's turn, he was like "and it's clear her passion is IoT" and the room laughed and all I could do was grin sheepishly cause it's true.

The weirdest part was having an engineering student come up to me after that to ask about Industry 4.0 and IoT. I always thought that they would be more familiar with it than me, since most of it is very engineering based (and I did get mistaken for an engineering student at the trade fairs, until it was clear that I only knew the basics).

Finally, time for dinner, which was left to us to decide! M-Chan and I went to Tenjin Horumon, because I would not shut up about how good it is and she got really curious. There was actually supposed to be two other girls, but they ended up going with their groups.

This was one person's portion!! I ended up having two bowls of rice and two bowls of miso soup with this. It's way more than I usually eat, but just eating the meat alone would seem... strange. I felt like I should have rice with it.

And it turned out to be really great that it was just M-Chan and I, cause we got to talk a lot, and we discovered a mutual love for Shusaku Endo!!! So rare! And after dinner, we just sat around and talked about politics and country differences and such until the shops closed and we realised it's time to go home!

So contrary to expectations, I got home the same time as the past few days. But this may have been the most fun day yet :D

Friday, 19 February 2016

Time for the Day 2 recap of the Oneness Asia Leaders Summit. We're halfway through right now! The day didn't start off so well though, because despite staying up late to do the poster, I left it (and my name tag) at home, and had to double back to get it. I managed to contact my team leader to say that I'd be late, but in the end, I managed to make it before the session started (I was about five minutes late but they hadn't started yet).

I still forgot my name tag though.

The poster session was way more interesting and less nerve wracking than I thought. I'm not good with crowds for long periods of time, but most of the interaction was one-on-one, so it wasn't too bad. I ended up with a lot of new Facebook friends hahaha. And my lack of a name tag has been overlooked so far (;

All the students here are so smart, and they have such big dreams! I really admire them, and I hope they keep holding on to them. The worst thing (I feel), would be to compromise on their dreams, perhaps by choosing safety and stability, and gradually lose what makes them unique. But for now, I have a lot of faith in them. They've been saying it since yesterday, but I finally understand - these really are the leaders of tomorrow.

In the afternoon, we had the first subcommittee session.. Mine was Resources (Energy) today.

First, we had to discuss the readings, but it was so difficult barely anyone understood it, even the engineering student in our team. What to do?

Turns out the student from Uzbekistan knows a lot about the energy problems in Central Asia, and coupled with my obsession with inserting IoT into everything, we managed to do a presentation. And as team leader, I was the one presenting. And the first team.

If you're interested in the gist of our presentation, basically, a big problem in Central Asia is that the energy plants are way too old. But to build new ones would require a very high initial cost, which is quite difficult. So, whatever solution it is, it has to be scalable. We considered microgrids and Virtual Power Plants, but one problem with this solution is that it'd eventually require intergovernmental cooperation, which might be a little difficult. A short term solution would be to increase the efficiency of the use and/or distribution of the energy, but that would still require Big Data and inserting IoT into everything.

After the presentations, we had the talk by the expert lecturer, which last doubled the original length. It was actually really interesting, because the speaker explained the energy situation in a very easy to understand way. And his English was really good too. Who says Japanese are bad at English?

After the Q&A session, we were given like 15 minutes to gobble our bento dinners, then we set off to Tenjin for the live music event!

It was kinda cool seeing the Oneness Asia name on the sign hahaha. My first live too!

We got free entry and one drink.

Oh, and I thought it was pretty unusual (is it? I don't know haha) to see a few elderly men in suits (I think they were representatives from our sponsors?) talking, so I snapped a photo. Good thing too, because after that, they sort of banned photos :p

The first act was a guy who could imitate voices. I didn't really know most of the songs, but his We Are the World was good!

The second band was a Visual Kei band, which would mark my first experience with the genre and possibly the first time I lost part of my hearing. It was just so loud.

I'm not very sure VK is not my thing. I probably spent more time wishing they adjusted the bass and drums, plus wondering if the lead singer was a man or woman than actually listening hahahaha.

The third, and last, band was... I don't know, a normal one? I enjoyed them the most though. I was standing with two people I just met (I met the girl while on the train, and the guy is an acquaintance of the girl hahaha) and somehow we ended in the front, so we joined the jumping crowd.

PEOPLE I AM TOO AWKWARD FOR CROWDS

I felt like I was jumping out of time, and like my hand waving was weird too? I don't know.

But I kinda got the hang of it at the end, I hope? I was certainly jumping a lot more and having fun hahahaha.

Plus the third band was really funny. They're from Osaka, so the lead singer and the guitarist did some jokes, and the guitarist 'taught' us how to wipe our noses 'unobtrusively'.

Plus, there was a Glico song, in honour of Osaka.

Once the set ended, I quickly made my way back, because I'm tired and want to sleep. Until tomorrow!

Thursday, 18 February 2016

The Oneness Asia Leaders Summit starts today! Since this should end at a more saner time than the SIBF (and start at a saner time too), I'm going to try blogging my reflections every day. Plus, I have my Dayre for help so...

Before the Summit
I was looking through the list of items to bring, and under 'Optional', they said something like "souvenirs from your home country". Since I'm very rule-abiding, I'm like "Oh no! No souvenirs how? Will an opened packet of ba hu work?"

But then, my mom (unwittingly) came to the rescue!

The last time she visited, she left behind a bag of keychains, so that's what I ended up bringing to the conference today. Although in the end, I didn't really see the international delegates give anything out. I did give some keychains out to a few new friends though.

And since they didn't write anything about a dress code, and my suit is at the dry cleaners (no way am I risking my suit by cleaning it myself haha), I went in a pair of jeans and a fluffy but nice top. Thankfully, most people turned out to not be in suits, so I'm safe! Oh, and I forgot my DSLR (and I probably won't bring it tomorrow either, because it's bulky and heavy, so only iphone shots for this!)

Oh, and I got to school early and managed to see this:

Pretty, right? I hope this means spring (and warmer weather) is on its way!

Anyway, I read that the reception booth was from 11, so I arrived a little before. Turns out it's from 11-12:30, so I had way too much time on my hands. So I did what I always do, and read a book. Managed to finish it too.

The Summit Starts

At around 12:30, we finally went into the 大講義室 (big lecture hall), and the opening ceremony started! Turns out that there were 300 participants!

Oh, and they had a representative of each country send a delegate to carry the flag, and guess which country didn't have a flag?

Singapore

Although I think they only realised my existence at the last minute, because at the end someone said something like "and we have a delegate from Singapore, but we don't have a flag ready. Thanks for coming though"

Then there were the opening speeches, and the Prime Minister ( or was it his office? ) also sent a message.

Out of all the opening speeches, I really liked the speech by Mr. Wataru Aso, which outlined the four traits of a leader:

1. Willingness to take full responsibility

2. Listens to all opinions and praises the good in them (because the one thing people hate is to be ignored)

3. Is decisive

4. Is optimistic (if you only see problems, you can really accept new ideas)

Then there were the keynote speeches. I'm normally a very pro-Asia person, but the first speaker was so "Asia rising, West declining" that I felt like I should defend the merits of Western civilisation. Maybe it's because I like logic and believe the first principles are the cornerstone of everything. But no matter what, it was certainly vey thought-provoking. I managed to speak to him after the speech too, and apparently the line was too long and a few people were cut off. Good thing I made my way there ASAP.

The second speech was on Fukuoka and the speaker was really interesting. I already knew most of the material though, except about the start-up visa, because of the Black Zemi.

The last speech was about sports and world peace and seeing things from the other's point of view. Plus the speaker (who's Japanese) seems to speak fluent Pashto (I think? Or Dari?). I found him very optimistic, but it was not bad. I mean, he mentioned wanting to go to North Korea (and he did go) to see what it was like with his own eyes, and he found it to have kind people and delicious food. I'm sure that there are kind people there, but I do wonder how much was an act put on to show the foreign visitors that North Korea is actually functioning as a country. To me, while going to the country itself is probably the best way of seeing how things are on the ground 99% of the time, there are probably cases like North Korea where this may not be the case.

After that was the cultural performances, which had an Indonesian dance, Japanese dance, Indian dance and ANKLUNG PERFORMANCE!!!

And the first song was Rasa Sayang, so I was quietly singing along for the first verse hahahaha. I don't want to generalise and say all Singaporeans, but I think quite a lot of us know this song too. Singaporeans, am I right? At any rate, here's a version of the song:

After that, we finally had dinner, which was stand-up style buffet. I had a lot of fun, and managed to talk to more people than I expected.

Plus, I became friends with the lady who did the Indian dance and her daughter, and discovered they live super close to me, so we're going to hangout some day!

That's basically my day in a nutshell. Now, I need to go and make my poster for the poster session tomorrow :D

Anyway, I had a make-up cooking class at 10am today, so I decided, why not go to Tenjin a little earlier and queue for the BAKE Chocolate Cheese Tarts? They're a 7-day limited edition cheese tart, and I really wanted to try one. The regular ones are already amazing, and well, these seem very popular. I walked passed around noon yesterday and they were already sold out (the shop opens at 9am). So I asked a shop assistant who was directing traffic, and she told me that there were people coming at 5am to queue up.

No way am I going to wake up that early and stand in the cold. Not even for something as amazing as that.

But, I did wake up at 7am so that I could read Tenjin at 8am and queue up. I figured that going one hour before opening would give me a nice enough spot in the queue that I could buy my chocolate cheese tarts by 10am.

When I arrived there, this is what I saw:

The queue actually snaked all the way to the ground level! (The floor is in the underground shopping street). And for some reason, the temperature dipped after two glorious days of good weather. But, I had my coat, my scarf and my iPad, so I managed to finish a book while waiting.

At about 8:54, one of the shop assistants came and I placed an order for 6 chocolate cheese tarts. So my queueing up and waking early was not in vain. Oh, and 6 was the maximum you could buy - I mean, if I'm going to queue, I might as well buy as much as possible, right?

At around 9:40, I started getting worried, because I was only here and there was no way I could get to class on time. But, there was also no way I could leave the queue, especially with the end in sight! I mean, that cordoned off line connects to the line in front of the shop. I WAS SO CLOSE.

At about 10am, I made my way in front of the shop, and about 15 minutes later, managed to snap this picture. MY CHOCOLATE CHEESE TARTS.

Of course, I couldn't celebrate very much, because after I bought them, I had to rush off to cooking class. We made lunch, and it was really good too

Pork pan-fried with ginger sauce, pumpkin salad and miso soup

Finally though, I got home and had enough space in my stomach to finally open the chocolate cheese tarts and try one.

But first, isn't their special box pretty???

Open it up and...

*drools*

Here's a close-up:

By the way, these were fantastic, as expected. They aren't cloyingly heavy, but rather more-ish. It's really good and I was like "I can probably polish off the whole box at one go... but I shouldn't."

In the end, though, I queued for two and a half hours for this, and while it was worth it (because you should definitely try this), I don't know if I'll be willing to repeat this again. I mean, I will for a new flavour I want, but for the same flavour? Hmm....

Thursday, 11 February 2016

When my exams ended yesterday, I immediately went to Iwataya's Salon du Chocolat, a chocolate fair that's lasts until Sunday, Feb 14. I was actually going to go with a friend, but she had to prepare for some job-hunting event at the last minute, so I ended up going along. ( +Béné no Fukuoka ! have you been? If you like chocolate, you might want to go!)

SO EXCITED. CHOCOLATE!

By the way, I went straight from school, so only phone photos, sorry ><

Anyway, the whole place was super crowded with pretty, fancy, and probably super expensive chocolate stores.

It would be so easy to get overwhelmed, and just leave without checking out anything. But, I (very luckily) checked out the official website beforehand, so I had a very singleminded purpose. I was going to go to this chocolate fair and eat

...
...
...

Pizza!

Ok, it's not the traditional pizza. It's a chocolate + Amaou strawberries + toasted marshmallow pizza from Max Brenner. I actually had no idea this was a famous shop, but my cousin recognised the name immediately even though I didn't have the full name shown, and someone else told me that the chocolate fondue is really good.

But I was there for the pizza, so I was going to get pizza.

This is the picture my cousin saw when she guessed the shop name.

There are only 200 pizza + drink sets available per day, and the drink is normally tea or coffee. But I figured that since this was a chocolate fair, I was just going to top up 200 yen and get the chocolate drink. The total was 1200 yen, which was expensive to me, but I figured that since the exams were over, I had an excuse to pig out on chocolate.

The pizza was amazing! The strawberries really worked with the chocolate, to help make it less rich, so it was just right for me. And I love the toasted marshmallows. They weren't too toasted or too underdone and every bite was pure sweet goodness.

The chocolate drink was like drinking liquid chocolate, which would be good under normal circumstances, but not when you're already eating an extremely rich chocolate pizza. I did enjoy it though, I was just afraid I was going to lose my voice from all the heatiness.

One last shot of the shop

After I had my pizza, I just walked around a little more and left. The way I see it, there were two possibilities: I buy everything, or I buy nothing. Since I'm running low on funds (plus, I wanted to go check out the sale on foreign books, and book money > chocolate money in terms of priorities), I opted for the buy nothing route.

And on a completely unrelated note, my tea from ANA arrived yesterday! Actually, I totally forgot to buy it while I was on the flight, and asked a classmate to help me buy. Turns out it was out of stock, so he helped me order it. If I was up to me, I probably would have been all "forget it", but now that it's here, I'm just so happy because it's so pretty! And the flavours seem really good!!

Wednesday, 10 February 2016

First, Happy Chinese New Year everyone! It's only 初三 (chu san - the third day), so I'm not that late, I hope. Anyway, I've had exams for the past three days, so I uh, 'celebrated' by studying. Well, at least it's all over, although that means that my third year is almost over too! I only have one essay and one presentation left.

Anyway, this post isn't to talk about Chinese New Year (though I wouldn't mind), or to talk about my studies (because I won't shut up once I start). Instead, I'm here to talk about food. I'll probably talk about it tomorrow too, because I went and ate something really, really, chocolaty and awesome today.

But before I get to today, I have to catch up on yesterday. After a really, really long period of time, I finally brought my DSLR to my cooking class. What can I say, if I'm not going to class from school, then I have the space to bring a camera. So.... PICTURES

This is the すまし汁. It's made with something my teacher called 一番だし (ichiban dashi - the number one dashi), which is made using konbu and katsuoboshi. But I'm probably most proud of the fact that I managed to tie a knot in the 三ッ葉 (mitsuba). Apparently, it's related to 縁結び (enmusubi) or something like that.

And this is the chirashizushi! Although my family mistook it for fried rice at first. It's my favourite dish of the day, although it's also the most troublesome to make. So many cooking utensils were used. I don't even own that many cooking utensils! But it's good, so I may just slowly, very slowly, make this dish one day.

This is the 菜の花からしあえ, which I didn't eat much of, even though I generally like stuff that has しょうゆ洗い(shoyu arai). By the way, 菜の花 is apparently translated as "rape blossom"? That is so odd... Although I didn't even know that you could eat this, because I've only known it as a blooming flower (this is the pre-blooming plant). Apparently an alternative name for this is broccolini, which I totally prefer. I actually like broccoli.

Friday, 5 February 2016

Hey everyone! Just popping by to give everyone a quick update about what's going on. Basically, finals season has started!

On Monday, I gave a presentation for my Economics in Japanese class (I don't know if I mentioned it, but I also took it last year). But basically, I presented on how Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet and how that's changing business models through servitisation of the manufacturing industry, and all my questions were about...

A dystopian/utopian future.

It was kinda interesting to see everyone's reactions though.

China (3 people): they were all really negative. My teacher fears the day where robots will completely replace humans, and she seems to think that the more technology progresses, the less human warmth there will be, and that technology will not be able to increase human interaction. The students are "bad people exist. This is unsafe"

Korea (2 people): they were actually positive. Very similar to my view actually.

Malaysia (1 person): The Malaysian dude was more concerned about growing inequality due to progress, which is totally understandable, and one of the things I do worry about too.

Singapore/me: I'm like "there are two futures. The minute we think that the future is dark, the minute we give up, that's when we lose. So we have to shape our own future instead of just letting it happen"

I ended up saying that quite a few times, because I just ignored the definition of crazy. Each time, I got the same response.

But you can't say that a bad future won't happen.

Well, no, but if we all think that way, then the future certainly won't be bright. I had show corning's Day of Glass and NTT Docomo's 2020 vision of the future, before my teacher was like "ok, well, let's all work hard for the future." (video below)

I definitely don't think the future is going to be all rosy, especially in the short term, what with the skills gap and possible redundancy of blue-collared workers, but I can't agree with my teacher that the world is fine the way it is.

There are kids being made to work in unsafe factories.

There are people who can't get the education they want.

There are people risking their lives in places like the Fukushima nuclear plant to keep us safe.

If IoT and the development of robotics can make all those jobs redundant and get kids into schools, people away from dangerous places, I'm all for it. I don't think this future is certain either, but I know that if we don't try to achieve it, we never will.

On Tuesday, I had my first exam, on the stock market! Since I spent all the pre-exam time preparing for Transcosmos, I felt super unprepared. But, the results came out today (my teacher is super fast!) and apparently, I passed with a D!!! Not a great grade, but it's not a fail!

On Wednesday, I had my test on The Functions of the Stock Market and um... I forgot the rest of the name. I normally remember it as "the class taught by people from Nomura". Fingers crossed I didn't make too many mistakes.

Today was my test on the Economics of the Telecom Industry, and it was definitely the hardest test so far. It's also the first test in three years where not a single person left the room before the time was up. Which is a pretty good indication of how tough it is, even though we can bring the textbook in. Although we didn't really use the textbook, because my teacher prefers to set questions to make you think (which is good, actually). Fingers and legs and arms and everything crossed, because this class is taught by my sub-zemi teacher, and I really, really want to pass it.

That's about it! Next week, I had exams on Monday (which is also the start of Chinese New Year), Tuesday and Wednesday, and them I'm done for the term! Except for one essay and one more presentation. But I'm just going to focus on Wednesday first. Anyway, depending on how efficiently I study during the weekend, I may or may not be able to blog more next week :D